You won’t believe how easy it is to make this delicious pecan pie. The secret: an outstanding pecan pie filling from The Great San Saba River Pecan Company, available in traditional or chocolate pecan pie. Photo by Yin Yang | IST.

WHAT IT IS: Pecan pie in a jar: All you do is buy or make the crust and mix in eggs.

San Saba Pecan Pie Filling In A Jar Makes Great Pies & Gifts

CAPSULE REPORT: You can mix up a fabulous pecan pie (or chocolate pecan pie) in minutes, with Pecan Pie Filling In A Jar from The Great San Saba River Pecan Company.

Make or buy a crust (see our recipe on the next page), add eggs to the jar contents, spoon in the all-natural filling and pop it into the oven. What emerges in 45 to 60 minutes are two standard pecan pies or one deep dish pie.

The pies are more delicious than commercial versions. Even made-from-scratch pecan pie recipes tend to be too sweet.

The pecans—and the pie filling—come from central Texas. The Great San Saba River Pecan Company has a grove of some 10,000 pecan trees, nestled in a park-like setting. Bounded by the scenic San Saba River in Texas Hill Country, the trees grow in an area where wild pecan trees first sprouted. A few thousand years later, we’ve got Pecan Pie In A Jar.

Not only is Pecan Pie In A Jar a timesaver at home, but it's also a timesaver in the gift-buying department.

Give everyone on your list one or two jars. (Of course, they’ll solve the mystery of how you make such a terrific pecan pie.)

Besides making impressive pecan pies, here are two more ways you can enjoy Pecan Pie In A Jar:

Sundaes. Warm the jar of filling and spoon it over ice cream for a pecan sundae (don’t forget the whipped cream).

Sticky Buns. Make “instant” sticky buns by drizzling half a cup of pie filling over a pan of just-baked soft dinner rolls.

We’re a fan of all of the company’s products, including delicious preserves studded with pecans (They make great gifts).

Pecan Pie History

The word “pecan” derives from the Algonquin word paka·n, meaning “nut to be cracked with a rock.”

Pecan trees grew wild thousands of years ago along rivers in Texas, the lower Mississippi River, parts of the central United States and northern Mexico.

Who Invented The Pecan Pie?

While some sources claim that early French settlers in New Orleans invented pecan pie after encountering the nuts (which they called pacane, after paka·n), food historians have not been able to trace the dish’s origin prior to 1925.

That doesn’t mean pecan pie didn’t exist, only that there is no record to prove it. Popular national cookbooks such as The Joy of Cooking and The Fannie Farmer Cookbook did not include the recipe prior to 1940. Earlier pie recipes with pecans have been discovered dating to 1886 and 1914, but these pie recipes have custard fillings.

The makers of Karo Syrup, a brand of corn syrup, popularized the recipe that we know today as pecan pie. The company says that the pie was created in the 1930s by the wife of a senior sales executive. A recipe with Karo Syrup, attributed to a Mrs. Frank Herring, has been found in a 1931 edition of an Oklahoma newspaper. And the rest is tasty history.